Prof. Dr. Bilgin Ayata is an associate member of the project. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA), and her MA degree from York University (Toronto, Canada). Her research interests center on transformation processes spurred by forced migration, conflict, protest movements, contestations of memory and postcolonial interventions. Her regional expertise includes the Middle East and Europe, in particular Turkey, the Kurdish regions and postcolonial Germany. She has published on transnational activism of Diasporas, the politics of displacement, foreign policy, Genocide denial and memory regimes. She has received research grants and fellowships by the MacArthur Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, FU Berlin, Johns Hopkins University and York University. In July 2014, she received the Lorbär Award for Excellence in Teaching of the Otto-Suhr Institute, FU Berlin. She appears frequently in international media on topics relating to refugees, migration, EU-Turkey relations, Kurdish politics and racism in Germany.

Prof. Dr. Ayata is cuurentlly an assistant Professor for political sociology at the University of Basel, where she has organized the public lecture series „Topographien of Displacement and Resistance“ to take place during Spring Term 2016.